Drinking Soda Can Age You As Much As Smoking

P27We know that sugary soda causes some dietary damage (12,000 stepsworth, to be precise). But, new research suggests that regularly drinking soda could be unhealthy in a less-obvious way: by making our cells age more quickly.

For the study, published online in the American Journal of Public Health, researchers at UCSF looked at the effects of sugary sodas, diet sodas, and fruit juices on the length of over 5,000 participants’ telomeres. Telomeres are the proteins that cap off the ends of chromosomes, and they naturally get shorter as we age. So, scientists are able to use telomere length as a marker of the aging process on a cellular level.

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